Deadfall Hotel [Paperback]

Deadfall Hotel is written primarily from the third person perspective of Richard Carter, a young widower left alone with his ten year old daughter, Serena. Together they've been wandering aimlessly ever since Abby died, but they see a new future ahead after Richard comes across a job vacancy for the new proprietor of The Deadfall Hotel. They pack up and set off, only to discover all is not what it seems.

Interspersed with the narration of Richard's learning period is the occasional excerpt from the journal of Jacob, the ageing previous manager who has stayed on as a handyman. These frame each individual chapter and provide a little more information about the hotel, from a man a little more in-the-know than Richard.

There's no overall story arc, other than the fact Richard and Serena are new at the hotel. Instead, the book is comprised of long chapters each describing one particular event or situation at the hotel. It's a strange format and I'm not entirely sure it works - they're too long to be short stories, but not long enough to form the basis of the book. I don't know, it was quite badly organised and ended very abruptly. I think I'd have preferred there to be one central issue to be dealt with, and the other events around the edges as sub-plots.

The stories themselves are quite varied; some more interesting than others. They're occasionally quite repetitive - the chapter about the cats in particular I was about ready to give up on. I swear I never want to look at another cat for a good long while, especially ones of this variety. The story about the religious cult is very well-written and wonderfully disturbing though :)

I just don't think we learnt enough about the hotel by the end - I couldn't really explain it to you if you asked me tomorrow. I know that this kind of writing device can work quite well on occasion, but Deadfall Hotel is narrated like you're meant to know what's going on, and I didn't. I don't need authors to get the hand puppets out to explain things to me, but a little bit more explanation would have been nice.

There are scenes of fairly graphic violence, animal torture/abuse and general creepiness, so I'd steer clear if you're squeamish about the above or you're under 15 years of age. Even I cringed a little at certain points, and I like to think I'm fairly settled.

While I think this would make a truly awesome TV show, I just couldn't connect to it as a book. The lack of consistency and explanation dragged down what was a wonderful concept with imaginative and descriptive prose. Steve Rasnic Tem clearly has a talent for writing, but I just can't help but think Deadfall Hotel could have been so much more.

This is a strange, strange book and will not be to everybody's taste.

It's easy to give an outline of the book - but not so easy to convey its atmosphere

Richard Carter is grieving the loss of his wife, Abby, in a fire. Desperate - over despertate? - to protect his daughter, Serena, he accepts the offer of a job as manager at the Deadfall Hotel. The Deadfall is a weird place. This is not just because of the guests. While we are never told so directly, it's clear that they are a collection of monsters, ghosts, vampires and other, even less definable oddities. The weirdness is also inherent in the location of the hotel, one of a hundred or so places on earth where, we are told, strangeness gathers. Richard settles at the hotel, living through a number of adventures (an invasion by evil cats; the visit of a fundamentalist sect whose leader has a strange family problem) before coming to a point of crisis which challenges his memories of Abby (her ghost, which emerged once he was living at the hotel). Throughout, the narrative alternates between Richard's story, and diary entries by Jacob, his predecessor and mentor, who stays on to show him the ropes.

It's impossible, on the other hands, to convey the sheer strangeness of the whole concept. The hotel is perhaps what would have resulted had Titus Groan decided to turn Gormenghast into a B&B - mixed with a dash of perplexing Lovecraftian geometry and the dimesions of the Tardis. In many respect the hotel seems to be alive. It becomes ill. It breathes. It dominates the book, and is by far the best realised character.

However, it is never clear what has actually happened, especially in the last few, almost dreamlike pages. What is the meaning of the Pool Room? How did the hotel get ill - was it something to do with Abby's ghost? What does Ms Malachiuk's story mean? This will, I think, frustrate those who prefer a more clearcut story, as may the philosophical speculations in Jacob's diary entries.

Overall, a fascinating, strange tale (you can't use the word "strange" too many times in describing this book) but not one I always found to my taste - I tend to prefer my horror a bot more straightforward. Steve Rasnic Tem has certainly written something intensely ambitious, though whether he has succeeded or not I'm not entirely sure. I think it deserves four stars for the ambition alone: if it was a bit clearer what he was trying to achieve I might have said five.

I bought this on the back of a gushing review in The Guardian but I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. There was some fantastic stuff- very original and creepy sequences- but somehow the book as a whole didn't quite add up. I think I wanted to know more about the hotel- it was like a set of interlinked short stories, rather than a novel. I would read something else by Steve Rasnic Tem, however, as he is obviously very talented.